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Forum:Weapons overhaul
I know I'm raising a lot of new discussions recently but this is one particular section of the site that is particularly bad. The weapon pages are unorganised and unconsistent. For example, there's a page titled "Handguns on 24" and "Submachine guns on 24", then there's "Light machine guns". There's "Handgun", "SigSauer P228", "Stun guns and tasers" and "Tranquilizer gun". All seems a bit random to me. Now I don't know very much about guns and I have no idea what would be a good way to organise them, but my recent work revamping The Game articles has shown that a lot of gun models are mentioned and I don't know if they should each have their own separate page or be linked to a certain type. What do you all think? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 16:42, June 4, 2010 (UTC) : The weapons/guns stuff has always bothered me. Since I don't know much about guns either, I haven't taken it upon myself to organize it, however. The occasional newbie has tried to add OOU stuff, but we definitely need to do a major overhaul/organization of it all. The best sources for IU weapons information are The Game and the CTU Ops Manual, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a start on things. The novels and TV show add a bit of extra information here and there, which can be added once the base pages are set up. --proudhug 17:11, June 4, 2010 (UTC) :: The Game is amazing for gun info. I didn' realise it until I was doing Ho Shin's Shop but if you press select it gives you tonnes of into about the guns, which we therefore can class as IU! I have the CTU Manual as well. I'll have a look into the design of it and come back with some ideas here and we can decide the best way to sort them. To be honest I think it would be good to have a seperate article for each gun mentioned and list its appearances (like I am doing with the soundtrack pages, see Storming The Cargo Ship). Then for ones that people can recognise in the show, they can be classed under one article on its own. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 09:58, June 5, 2010 (UTC) : Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I'd forgotten just how much information they give you on weapons in The Game. They even go into the history of each gun! --proudhug 13:08, June 5, 2010 (UTC) :: OK this is great, I'll start making pages like that. The only problem now: no images for each page. We'll need to figure out how to capture images on the PC from the PS2, I remember someone talking about it a while back. I'll try and look into it but I have no idea how it will work. Pages for stuff like this will look horrible without images. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 16:57, June 5, 2010 (UTC) :: Ah, one last thing before I start making the pages. Should I title them, for example, "P7 Pistol" or "P7 pistol"? The Game uses large caps for the first letter of everything, and the CTU manual uses them interchangeably. It goes against the site's policy but I think that we should capitalise every word. 17:26, June 5, 2010 (UTC) : Haha, I spent all day yesterday trying to get a PS2 emulator to work, but failed. It would be so useful to be able to capture images from the game. I hate those promo photos with a passion. : I wouldn't go with capitals unless it's the real world way of spelling it. --proudhug 17:28, June 5, 2010 (UTC) ::Hi, I've been looking through some of the weapons pages and I'm not sure what they were like before this discussion, but it looks like maybe there is a little more work to be done. My thoughts on how weapons should be are: ::Firstly, we can pretty much tell what all the weapons used in the shows are, the info is largely there at http://www.imfdb.org/index.php/24. The problem is working out what is IU and what OOU. ::The IU articles can be done on a weapon by weapon basis. We should try to avoid identifying guns that aren't referred to - ie just because someone mentions an AK-47 in Veto Power doesn't mean we then list all the AK-47s in day 1 on the same article (which is sort of what we have at the minute). Only include information about the specific weapon that was identified. Then all these articles can be in the 'weapons' category, and probably won't need categorising much more than that (unless into Game ones and show ones). ::Then we can make OOU pages for 'weapons featured on 24'. The main concern seems to be how to categorise them, and I would say there are 3 possible ways: by season, by type of gun, or by character who uses them. Now much as I love the Weapons used by Jack Bauer article, he is the only person that would work for so I think that could be a one off. So I think much like unnamed characters, we have different pages for different types of gun, then cross reference pages for each season that link to the 'type' page, where the information will be. We could have links between the IU and OOU articles in the BGIN section, and also to the 'weapons used by jack bauer' article. ::Hopefully if we can sort out a standard for the weapons section we can remove the red links and ambiguity about what info goes where.--Acer4666 01:35, January 24, 2011 (UTC) ::: This sounds like a good idea, but I frankly do not follow the final details you described. I don't know if this info helps, but: unless it was mentioned iu, we do not make page titles for a weapon. So if a character is running around with a Steyr Assault Rifle, but it is never identified in the show, then we ignore it. If crew members/actors mention "Steyr" while talking about that scene in the audio commentary, then we can make note of that in the appropriate commentary page. But there still is no page eligible. The thing we can do it link it over to its own subheading in an OOU page in either case. Again, I can't tell if you already knew this, or if this helps, but it's all I can think of at the moment. 07:13, January 24, 2011 (UTC) ::::Yeah, perhaps I wasn't too clear but I was just was trying to clear up how to categorise things. I just mean we should have (for example)a page called 'handguns used on 24' OOU, with subheading for all the guns used as props,split into seasons. Then another page called 'weapons used in series 1', with just pics and links to the 'handguns' article. Then if someone refers to a Sig Sauer, we make an IU article describing how that particular Sig Sauer was used, but not mentioning all the times an actual one was used as a prop (thats the the remit of the 'handguns' page). Then in the BGIN we say 'an actual Sig Sauer was used to represent this gun', and then a link to the 'handguns on 24' article. Maybe I should start doing some editing on the pages and you may be able to see what I mean--Acer4666 08:49, January 24, 2011 (UTC) ::: Just so you know, I did start to change some things in this respect when I started replaying The Game but never got around to finishing. You see, the Game is iu, so all the names that the guns are given can be given their own pages. When you play The Game, you can visit the pages for the weapons and it has some information about them on. What I've been doing is writing that information on the page for the weapon, then listing all its appearances in The Game, as outlined when you get the gun for the certain level. That make sense? The other stuff, I've not really worked on (apart from Stun gun and a few other ones). --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 10:50, January 24, 2011 (UTC) ::::Ah yes, excellent, the game information would be great for the IU articles. But the stun gun article is sort of what I was talking about - it was mentioned in the game, so having info from the game about it is fine, but I think we should remove it's 'appearances' in day 1, 2, etc. as those items were never referred to as stun guns if that makes sense? What do you think?--Acer4666 11:19, January 24, 2011 (UTC) ::::Ok I had a play around and this is what I suggest for the OOU articles. I've just based this on the 'unnamed characters' groupings (by job and by season) but swapped round where the bulk of the information goes (because there will be so many multiple-season entries). ::::For each season, we have 'weapons used on day X' article. This is an example for day 1. I tried out 2 different ways to have the episode appearances presented, not fully sure on how would be best to show these. ::::Then, we also have 'handguns used on 24', 'submachine guns used on 24', etc, and I have this example. See how the multiple season appearances are not as much of an issue because we just see a pic of the weapon, then a link to the appropriate 'weapons used on day X' article. ::::Also to decide on is what gun 'types' we will officially recognise - the guys at imfdb seem to know their guns and i think they normally have 'handguns', 'submachine guns', 'rifles', 'machine guns', 'shotguns', 'other', (I don't know if its necessary to split rifles in assault and sniper, but we may see this once we get started). Anyways, let me know what you think. I realise it is v complicated and sorry if I don't make sense - it's just quite a task to get these weapons articles sorted out! The IU articles are another matter, but this is what I meant for the OOU ones.--Acer4666 20:41, January 24, 2011 (UTC) Honestly, I feel like in this case we should ease up on our IU restriction and just make an article for each gun that can be identified. Restricting ourselves to the five or so guns that were clearly identified in dialog would be piecemeal and confusing to most readers. To my knowledge, the writers have never mis''identified a weapon, so I feel that it would be safe to assume that they ''are what they appear to be (that is, the actual guns the production team used to film the scene). Most of them, after all, have their names inscribed on the weapon itself, so it's not completely baseless to use their real name. Actually, AA-12 Shotgun already does this, even though the weapons there are never identified as such. --Pyramidhead 08:06, January 27, 2011 (UTC) : Easing up on IU restrictions opens the doors for all manner of complications. See the Nike business symbol on a pair of shoes? Now we'll have to deal with content about a company never mentioned on-screen. Recognize an obscure college insignia on someone's hoodie sweater in the background? Boom! we get a gigantic OOU article about that university even though the name isn't discernible. : It's best we leave any OOU content on an OOU collection page. Individual articles about stuff that isn't explicitly sourced and link-able are simply outside the scope of this project. The good news is, if you check the earlier posts, there is apparently tons of IU information on many weapons in The Game, so that can certainly satisfy your guys' appetites for weapon article work that is eligible to be here. 08:29, January 27, 2011 (UTC) ::What does anyone think of my proposed OOU collection page? I think it would be better than what we have currently--Acer4666 08:40, January 27, 2011 (UTC) :::That's probably the best option. In that case, I guess we could just keep articles for weapons that are explicitly identified, making sure to distinguish between those and the complete list(s) with regards to IU/OOU. I think we could probably put all the weapons into a single article, since they tend to overlap across seasons. --Pyramidhead 10:03, January 27, 2011 (UTC) :::: Just going purely what I think the general opinion is at the minute, I think there is a desire to split the weapons down into their respective seasons. Currently all the weapons pages I linked in my last post, as well as Weapons used by Jack Bauer, have the different seasons segregated, that's why I suggested splitting them. However I think having one article split into seasons would be a bit long. But thats just my opinion of course--Acer4666 10:39, January 27, 2011 (UTC) :::::My idea was to divide it by weapon type. But either way it might be a lot for one page. Anyway: If we're actually going to incorporate snippets of dialogue or other source info like The Game stuff, it needs to be separate from any complete list like we're talking about. Hence the Springfield M1A link in my example, which would be based solely on its mention and appearance in --Pyramidhead 10:59, January 27, 2011 (UTC) ::::::Ah cool, that appearances box looks good. I agree that there is also a desire to have them sorted by type - if you have another look at my post that you first replied to you'll see that I'm proposing we sort them both ways - much like we do with unnamed characters. I have tried out two versions of a 'handguns on 24' page - here and here. It's just a question of which sorting method should contain the info and which should be a cross reference page - I made the 'weapons on day X' the info page as really the only info we should include on these pages is the appearances on the show. As you say, IU information should be kept for the IU pages, so in your example the link to the M1A page is fine, but I think the info you have under the link should go (unless it is relevant to its appearance on 24 ie. the Springfield has a capacity of 17 bullets but Tony is seen firing 37 in one go).--Acer4666 12:46, January 27, 2011 (UTC) :::::::As long as the page is OOU (which it is, by necessity), I think it might be good to include at least a basic rundown of each gun. Those ones are from Wikipedia. For organization, I think there should be a list page(s) like the one I made, galleries displaying weapons by season like you made, as well as a section on each episode page listing the weapons that appeared. In general, I think most people will want to know what the gun was in a particular episode. It would be great if there were a section under Background information with bullets linking to each weapon on the main page. --Pyramidhead 20:46, January 27, 2011 (UTC) ::::::::Good points. I'm pretty new here and will defer to your judgement on this - your page is unquestionably better looking than mine! The amount of gun information to include and its relevance to 24 is a grey area anyway (although I personally would avoid too much copy n paste from wikipedia). If no-one has any objections do you mind starting the main info page and then we can see if it gets too long and needs splitting down into separate articles? I am currently working through day 1 on my user page example and stating when each gun appears and who carried it, which makes it easy to see what the gun was in a particular episode - this brings me onto your last point, where I have to say I would probably be against the OOU prop articles invading the episode pages - I was planning to do a similar thing for phones and vehicles (these have been requested) and so it could end up making the BGIN sections massive.--Acer4666 21:06, January 27, 2011 (UTC)